Pulse Cannon

So you may have noticed that there was no Pulse Cannon last week. I intended to do it. But wouldn’t you know it, that bane of online communication, the way I connect to the net, my dsl modem crapped out. Or more specifically it would work fine, overheat and then shut down. So this caused no small amount of frustration. My modem isn’t exactly in an easy to access location, nor really is the rest of my LAN as I soon found out. I didn’t know it was my modem at the time you see. So I was working backwards. The router had been acting screwy since an attempt was made by someone not named ME to upgrade the firmware, and that was replaced with an older one. Of course we then realised soon after this WHY we had replaced the old one, and put the new one back in with it’s factory defaults reset. But the net was still being a pain, so we moved down the line to the modem. Sure enough, there’s the problem.

So in comes the new modem. And at the same time in comes a new router, now equipped with wireless connectivity. So I get the bright idea to hook up the old router where we had a hub. This sounds easier than it actually is when you’ve never done this before. It took me a solid hour of sifting through google search after google search to find what the correct set up for that was. Anyway, it’s all sorted, here I am, new fangled network in tow.

So why did I just bore you with that lovely little story?

Simple. Or rather, not simple. It took me far too long to get this situation sorted out, and I’m not exactly a novice where computers are concerned. No I’m not a certified network tech, but hooking one network up to another shouldn’t cause me this much grief. I do realize that using one router behind another is somewhat like using a nuke to kill a single man, and that I should have just installed a switch instead, or put up with the hub that was suffering from data collision. But when you look ahead, the digital home is fast approaching reality, and if your network can’t keep up or is too difficult to keep up, then all of these new toys won’t mean squat. That means you need simple hookups.

Of course, I also happen to have the solution to my problem already in the house. The wireless connection on the new router will allow me to network mulitple devices as I need them, letting me rotate things as they are used. But this isn’t very secure at the moment. While I applauded the idea of people finding unguarded wifi hotspots and using them before, now I’m on the other side of the fence and screw you, I don’t want you on my network. So the process needs to be refined. But clearly if online gaming is going to become the force that Microsoft and Sony and heck, even Nintendo lately want it to be, it needs to be wireless and it needs to be easy. Otherwise it’s just going to remain awkward, tied down, or just plain too much of a hassle for those not so inclined to go to any length to equip themselves with a proper household network.


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